Since March of 2009, Front Porch Republic has published hundreds of pieces on their website, exploring and advancing decentralist and localist ideas, hosting lectures and conferences, and building a unique coalition of writers and thinkers from “left” and “right” to think together about a more humane American future. They’ve even managed quite literally to alter the terms of political and cultural debate: they unwittingly inserted the noun “porcher” into the blogospheric lexicon. FPR aims to bring together thoughtful men and women across America to promote human-scale institutions and the rebirth of community. FPR wants to help people resist the dehumanization that seems to threaten from every quarter, focusing on the overlapping local and regional groups, communities, and associations that provide a matrix for human flourishing. Through FPR’s website, books, a semi-annual print journal, an annual conference, and other ventures, they seek to discuss concepts such as human scale, the distribution of power, and our responsibility to the future and to bring them back into the public conversation.
Launched in 2014, Front Porch Republic Books publishes works about place, localism, community, decentralism, and conservation. Titles include significant works on politics, economics, and culture, as well as new editions of previously published works that deserve a new audience. Other titles provide practical advice on how to enact and embody a localist ethic. FPR Books’ managing editor is Jason Peters, and its editorial advisory board includes such prominent public figures as Andrew Bacevich, Rod Dreher, Richard Gamble, and Walter McDougall. Among FPR Books’ titles are Localism in the Mass Age: A Front Porch Republic Manifesto, edited by Mark T. Mitchell and Jason Peters; Telling the Stories Right: Wendell Berry’s Imagination of Port William, edited by Jack Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro; Poetry Night at the Ballpark, and Other Scenes from an Alternative America, by Bill Kauffman; America Moved: Booth Tarkington’s Memoirs of Time and Place, 1869–1928, edited by Jeremy Beer; and The Demise of Virtue in Virtual America: The Moral Origins of the Great Recession, by David Bosworth.
In 2019, FPR launched a print journal. Local Culture: A Journal of the Front Porch Republic is published semi-annually. It is dedicated to the conditions that best conduce to human flourishing: the virtues, political and economic decentralization, localism, liberty, respect for natural limits, tradition—especially the humane tradition in arts and letters—and living arrangements built to human scale.
Beginning in 2011, FPR has hosted an annual conference. These convivial gatherings provide opportunities for writers and readers to meet in person. During the day, presenters provide substantive — and humorous — food for thought, and in the evening they convene at a local eatery to continue the conversation and catch up on old friendships. See the topics and locations of FPR’s past conferences.
The current volume:
SELECT CONTENTS:
Jeff Polet
“Civility, Insult, and Friendship in the Merit-Victim Sweepstakes”
Katherine Dalton
“The Mannerlessness of Power and the Power of Manners”
Kevin Brown
“Cheek-by-Jowel Citizenship, or What We Should Be Talking About”
Partner Features shared with Mars Hill Audio
The theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Forgotten lessons from Christopher Lasch
